Rapid increase in mobile subscriber base and recent emergence of new applications, such as multimedia online gaming (MMOG), mobile television (TV), Web 2.0 and the like streaming contents together with increased level of penetration of data-intensive devices, such as smart phones, broadband enabled laptops, and other similar devices have resulted in an explosion of Internet data traffic going through mobile networks. While mobile network operators have historically been innovative and successful in expanding network capacity, the current rate of growth in demand is unprecedented, thereby, leading the mobile network operators to become increasingly interested in the notion of mobile data offloading, also referred to as data offloading for delivering data using complementary network technologies that were targeted for the mobile networks.
Offloading selected types of Internet protocol (IP) traffic, for example, Internet traffic, frees up capacity and thereby improves data experience of users and quality of service (QoS) on a macro network. Reduced traffic means reduced network cost (reduced capital investment and reduced operating expenses) for the mobile network operators.
As per third generation partnership project (3GPP) standard, a typical mobile network includes an Internet offload gateway (IOGW) (a selected IP traffic offload (SIPTO) module) at an lu packet switched (IuPS) interface for a universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) network. Generally, the IOGW is located at the IuPS interface and provides a standard IuPS interface to a radio network controller (RNC) and a serving general packet radio service (GPRS) supporting node (SGSN) to inspect the incoming packets to determine whether the data packet is requesting access to the Internet and routes the data packet directly to the Internet based on the determination without the data packet having to go through the SGSN and a gateway GPRS supporting node (GGSN) in a mobile operator's packet core network. Typically, the IOGW is enabled by network address translation (NAT) and packet inspection based on mobile network operator's policies at different levels, for example, based on per user, per access point name (APN), per service type, per IP address and the like.
Existing techniques provide the above SIPTO solution by routing the packets based on a destination network, routing packets based on the APN specified by a connection request, routing secondary packet data protocol (PDP) context packets with QoS requirement different from primary PDP context packets, and routing packets based on the mobile network operator's requirements by fetching information from other network elements like a policy charging and rules function (PCRF) and a charging gateway function (CGF)/offline charging system (OCS) using explicit signaling. However, these mobile data offloading techniques have inefficiencies and associated issues, such as inability to handle mobile network operator's complex policy requirements and deviation from defined set of standards.